Ezra Klein: Tax Cuts And Wars Account For Half Our Debt By 2019

The Republican National Convention has a debt clock prominently displayed on stage, ostensibly to blame President Obama for it, but they are not telling the truth.

…the Republicans will end up blaming Obama for the policies they pushed in the Bush years, and the recession that began on a Republican president’s watch, and a continuation of tax cuts that they supported. They’ll have to. Because if they took all that off the debt clock, there wouldn’t be much debt there to blame him for at all.

The single thing you should look at to understand the debt clock and what it is — or isn’t — telling you is this graph from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. It does something very simple. It takes public debt since 2001 — which is when we last saw surpluses — and breaks it into its component parts.